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Saturday, August 14, 2010

A Little Rain at the Blooms of Bressingham

We were very fortunate to have Adrian Bloom take us on a private tour of the Bressingham Gardens - from the older sections designed by his father Alan and his newer Foggy Bottom gardens. The grounds are composed of huge sweeps of perennial beds and really beautiful specimen trees.

For people who lived in this area and were visiting the fabulous nursery - it shows exactly how the plants will perform and give them great ideas about what might look good together.

There's nothing like having a whack of property to set off a great tree.

Can I grow it in my garden? No, but sure makes a pretty picture.

Over and over again I was struck by the timing of bloom of plants - so completely different than in this part of North America. You look at this picture and say, my what a great combination. However, here they don't bloom together in my garden at all, and in fact both the Astrantia and Tradescantia were completely done in my garden at this point.

But my Crocosmia hadn't even begun to bud.

It just shows you really need to plant lots of Kniphofia to get a good show. One little plant just looks like a match stick.

Campanula 'Kent Belle'. This formed a nice big beefy plant and had a great purple colour.

More is more when it comes to plants - the Blooms show it's always better not to be stingy. And then of course the best part is after seeing all those wondrous specimens growing, you can go to the nursery and knock yourself out. There is so much we could learn about running nurseries here from the Blooms. First of all - look at the colour-blocking. Then, how 'bout those fancy nice round benches for the product?

How polite is this? "Seasonal Clearance" How welcoming! And look, the plants appear to be alive. So different from the places I've been here where they've got a horrid bench of nearly dead crap with bright orange stickers.

Even I might give over my life to keep these splendid water-pigs alive.

And for people who are new to gardening, or in a hurry, or just need a spot of colour - look how easy have they made it for their customers to spend their money.

As you go inside the store, should you have an empty hand, wouldn't you want to pick up one of these Streptocarpus? Here they come in one colour - purple. Sigh. If this Dibleys display wasn't just too much to take - it gets worse - look at the display at the Hampton Court Flower Show - and this was just one half of it.....A M A Z I N G! (And, as you may have guessed a seque to my next post from the Hampton Court Flower Show)

4 comments:

Barbara:Blooms of Bressingham on the eve of my own roadtrip - could it get more splendid I ask you? What splendid gardens, and goodness, I squealed with delight at the Cornus - is it 'Argentea' by chance? Fantabulous! The nursery is what it must be like being let loose in a hort candy store!

I must ask for your personal opinion..... colour blocks versus botanical Latin? Big discussion on the eve of my trip. Can you guess which side of the fence I reside within? LOL! I am so happy you were able to vacation in England this summer, and better still, that you're so generously sharing your experience.

Barry - the trees were indeed marvellous - didn't squish over there to read the tag, but that would be my best guess too. I always thought line 'em up in alpha order by botanical name, but after seeing this and listening to gardeners being confounded by plants next to each other just because they follow in the alphabet, I'm thinking we don't sell chives, dish soap, lettuce, tide and tomatoes in alpha order, there's got to be a better way. However, that being said, the plants here were colour blocked, use-themed & always called by their botanical names. Can you believe I've started to save my pennies thinking about the next garden tour?Carol, So many of these gardens I'd wanted to go back to shoot them during different times of day to get better light - aside from being a little dark at times, I think the clouds and rain did add to photos too. I'm with you, I've become a real Salvia devotee - I had to stop fondling the merchandise at one point, it was becoming too hard to leave them on the bench when I left the store for the bus!

Barbara, I love visiting gardens for the ideas and inspiration~I've been to several that inspired me to buy a few water pigs and plants guaranteed to die in my climate. But it was fun...Loved this post and as always your fun narrative!

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About Me

I am a garden designer, consultant and writer. In addition, I work with my husband who is a real estate agent - doing the photographs, feature sheets and book keeping.
I love dogs - especially great big ones (and now very a very small dear one) - and the odd friendly cat. I travel whenever I have the money. And love nothing better than entertaining and cooking up a storm.